Tuesday, February 22, 2011

I'm more sick of writing about Genpo Roshi than you are of reading about him. And I have totally neglected plugging my tour here. I've been putting updates on Facebook and Twitter. But not here. So here's the latest updates:

From March 16-20 I'll be in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in the Great White North! I'll post a schedule of events soon. There are several planned.

The tour has been going really well. I just spent several days with the indomitable Zuiko Redding, head of the Cedar Rapids Zen Center. Last Sunday I was the doshi (practice leader) at their all-day zazenkai where I also gave the dharma talk. I love the word zazenkai because to me it means "zazen party." People who aren't familiar with Japanese probably hear it differently. But the suffix "-kai" usually refers to some kind of gathering and is the common way to refer to a party for a given occasion. Zazenkai is a legitimate Japanese word, not an American invention. Still, I always hear it as "zazen party."

It was a cool zazen party. And Zuiko is one of the coolest Zen teachers in the US if you ask me. She went to high school with Janis Joplin in Port Arthur, Texas and settled in Cedar Rapids some years ago. She was a university professor and world traveler. In many ways she's kind of the opposite of me. She's very well-spoken and polite, but she can be quite strict in some areas of practice where I am very lacking and loose. She has a three-legged cat named Sanbon (Japanese for "three legs").

Before that I was hosted in Lawrence, Kansas by Judy Roitman and her husband Stan Lombardo. I gave talks at Judy's place, the Kansas Zen Center in Lawrence, Kansas as well as at the Unity Temple in Kansas City, Missouri a gig that was set up by my pal Blake Wilson, a writer over at Elephant Journal.

Judy is a teacher in the Kwan Um School, a Korean Zen order. I've done talks at a number of Korean Zen places and it's always really interesting. They do things a bit differently. They have certain services that involve enormously long periods of chanting, sometimes over an hour, and lots of prostrations (108 in a row each morning at some temples). The chanting always makes me think things like, "Y'know Inna Gadda Da Vida feels like it goes on forever but it's barely half as long as this and far less repetitive." Also, when I go from a Korean Zen place to a Japanese style one I always feel like I'll never complain about the length of services again.

Still, I really like the Korean Zen lineage teachers I've met and when it comes time for the zazen, we pretty much do the same thing. Judy is one of the best teachers I've met. If you're out in Kansas you should go see her.

The Zero Defex show at the Matinee was a hoot! Randy Blythe of Lamb of God guested on two songs, which was amazingly amazing. It's not often we get a guy whose band can sell out stadiums all over the world and regularly tours with Metallica to join us on stage. If you missed that show you can see us on April 9th at the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights, Ohio supporting MDC and The Subhumans. We used to play shows with MDC back in the 80s. At one point we were supposed to do a split EP with them. The master and cover were prepared, but the record never happened. Sad.

I'm talking to a number of people about possible talks in Europe this Autumn. I learned that calling that season "Fall" is an American thing and not understood by some people over there, so Autumn it is. It looks pretty definite that I'll be hitting Germany, Holland, Finland, France and England this time out. Anyone who has any good ideas for other places I can talk can write me at spoozilla@gmail.com.

My talks on this tour have been split into two topics. One is the Sex, Sin and Zen talk, where I talk about sex, sin and zen. The others have been talks about zen practice, particularly why zen practice is pointless and must be pointless. Any time you introduce a goal into zen practice you ruin it.

OK. Now I gotta go write a piece that the magazine Zen Monster has been asking me about for ages.

See you in St. Louis!

(I’m still taking a break from reading the comments section of this blog. If you have something you feel you must say to me in response to this, write me an email at spoozilla@gmail.com. If you just post something in the comments section, I will not see it.)

Or perhaps Brad is just taking gigs what he gets? And besides, restaurants, pubs and bars are probably the best places to talk about Dharma: there are real living people, not just some fake-ass-hypocrit-Buddhist-wannabe-fuckers. Spreading Dharma in the places where people really are is the most important thing!

STANLEY LOMBARDO? FROM KANSAS? THE CLASSICIST? Oh my god, okay, the writer of a blog you follow's having met Stanlet Lombardo is not exactly a brush with celebrity per se (ahaha), nor is Lombardo exactly a, er, celebrity (I mean, I would throw him under a bus in an istant if it would bring Richmond Lattimore back from the dead) but STILL. YOU KNOW STANLEY LOMBARDO. THAT IS SO, SO AWESOME. I AM SO, SO AMAZED.

The others have been talks about zen practice, particularly why zen practice is pointless and must be pointless. Any time you introduce a goal into zen practice you ruin it.

I've no problem with this in a certain context really... until the inevitable happens and it's adopted as dubious macho Zen jingoism and, when shitty nests are built in it, all of a sudden it becomes quite contrary to the original intention. This happens.

If we're doing it just to do it, then the doing of it is already the point. If we're doing it for some imagined point (even imagining that we're 'doing pointlessness' or have 'pointlessness' as our goal!) then it's neither the point of actually doing it nor (obviously) the imagined point... so 'pointlessness' may be just another way to 'point' our pointy noses in the right general direction.

What's interesting, and what Dogen acknowledges and explores, and what is not not covered in the 1-D, direct-but-simple neo-Kodo utterance of Brad's (it may have been very appropriate at the time however, I don't know that point) is that we will necessarily have to sit through dropping off all points and even pointlessness or anything in relation to points. If it wasn't for the real doing-point, and however many fantasy 'points' we can throw at it, there would be no grist for the mill, no point in doing it, in that there'd be nothing/no one to realise/be realised.

Banksy's true identity is known to very few for Banksy prefers to remain unidentified other than by his wall art, of which there's loads about in Bristol and (particularly east) London - a couple of fine examples within 100 yards of my house - and now some in the US.

No one pays attention to Mysterion. He's in the way in here with all his crap he posts. I have made these sort of statements repeatedly in here, and they're true, but the guy won't reform his annoying yet irrelevant ways.

It'd be best overall if he simply just went away, but I know he won't do that.

Recently my former teacher, Barry Graham, has been under scrutiny as to the legitimacy of his claims of Dharma Transmission. I won't detail all of it here but you can read these blog entrys --

http://gomyo.livejournal.com/39124.html

http://gomyo.livejournal.com/39560.html

http://tinyurl.com/ctgg6b

It really piqued my interest as I was a formal student of his and had received Jukai ...

I started to ruminate and gather information as best I could ... I remember he had told me personally that he entered training at twenty in 1985 or 1986 ... which is interesting in itself as he entered the USA at least thirteen years ago ... meaning that it seems he did all his training culminating in becoming a Roshi between 1986 and 1996. That must be a record of some sort in Zen training.

He has stated publicly that he trained for some time at the River of Dharma Sangha in Glasgow, Scotland ... I do not know how long ... but then he related to me personally he moved to Edinburgh and discontinued contact and did not know if the ROD is still in existence or the whereabouts of the sensei. I could find no record of past nor present existence.I have written various Glasgow based Sangha leaders but have received no reply as yet.

He also told me he had studied in Japan at the Butsudo Zen Center in or near Kyoto.This is also a matter of public record as he posted this on his blog.He personally told me he had put in four years there. He remarked in conversation with me that he had been given dharma transmission and was in fact a Roshi. Barry said he thought he was given transmission just to mess with his fellow monks heads in that he was the only foreigner at the monastery more than anything else.

So I tried some searching on the temple and the teacher he mentions on his website. It appears to be that Google has never heard about any Yamashiro (山白) roshi/sensei/osho. While this appears to be an incomplete list, there seems to be no Butsudo (仏道 means simply Buddha Way) temple in Kyoto, only one near Hikone City and something called 仏道寺田中 in Nanto (by Google Maps). I asked for and received help with searches in japanese by concerned monks that are fluent.

I wrote to various temples and organizations asking if anyone had any record of the center or it's sensei. I wrote to the head org. -- the Sotoshu --- I received this reply ...

We have received your email in our small office in San Francisco via the Shumucho in Tokyo. After making inquiries about Ando Yamashiro Roshi and the Butsudo Zen Center, we have found no person or center with those names in the Sotoshu.

If you come up with more information (e.g. a telephone number or specific address, etc.), it may be that we could help you further, but at the present time, this is all we can do for you.

Best wishes.

Gassho,

Soto Zen Buddhism International CenterSan Francisco

So I have drawn the conclusion that it seems to be that Barry is misrepresenting himself and his credentials.

I see no problem in a layperson setting up a place for zazen practice. But posing as some official personage in order to gain status and students is against basic ethics.

I urge all to give this information I have provided the gravity that it deserves. There is a vast reservoir of critical examination that I am attempting to chronicle and post (it is pouring in like a river down a mountain) but I wanted to get this information out and available so that my fellow buddhists could make as informed a decision as possible.

Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky went hunting? Well anyway, Brasky decides he's gonna hunt down all four members of the Banana Splits. He stalks and kills every one of them with a machete. They all beg for their lives, except Fleagul.

We begin to do lots of things for reasons which eventually go away. We might get married for romantic love but stay married for compassion, co-dependence, or inertia (or all 3). I came to zazen because I wanted to be less stressful and to see the world clearly, now I do it because I feel like poop when I don't. I was hoping for one thing and found after some practice that while my reasons no longer applied that zazen was still important to me so I stayed.Getting into zazen for the "wrong" reasons is no detriment to zazen in the long run.

Well I vote for Mysterion. He has a right to be here just like you trolls. His posts are more thoughtful than most, and include more useful links. His opinions? are like assholes...just as valuable as yours.

So, 'Pointlessness', or having a 'point' are examples of how we reify (treat abstract concepts, ideas, thoughts etc as real). I'll stick with reify here, anyway.

Terms employed in an attempt to practically address the processes of reification, being terms that fall under the remit of these processes, inevitably fail to be anything other than more of these processes at work.

Simply put: I can say or think it (of practice), but doing it is another thing.

However, there is a problem even with the above formulation. For it can be taken to derogate the activities of saying and thinking for some holier-than-living 'another thing'.

It also places 'I' as the foremost, sole, creative or controlling function, rather than as one involved somewhere amidst thinking and saying: orchestrating, editing, filtering and so on.

And so the 'doing it' of Zen practice must include saying and thinking. Even if, say, one sits in silence the processes involved in 'saying' will arise. After all, the doing of sitting in silence will involve the effort of 'not saying' which is part of 'saying' processes.

I could go further and say that all experiences become reified as something experienced (form), and the putative beginner's point or goal of practice being to experience the not-something-in-particular-ness, the contingency, of that something (emptiness).

Emptiness as a reified goal of practice, in other words, misses its pointlessness, and must be realised as such: Emptiness is emptiness/ form is form.

In living, this form is form could take the form of aims or as aimlessness. Having aims and being aimless describe experiences and activities that comprise a being's doings from which there is no escape.

Perhaps better to say there is a thorough involvement in what I find myself doing or what is going on; or there is thorough involvement in activities - mental or physical - that distract me from being aware of this thorough involvement (which we could call a partial involvement to help matters or non-matters such as being miserable over something or nothing.

This description I would say (wouldn't I) includes all notions involved in forms of doing, negative or positive, that feed in and out of 'Zen' practice.

To be fully involved with a goal is to realise its goalessness, its contingency, to the extent that it is neither goal nor goalessness and can't be reified.

Not being reified doesn't have a reifier, and can hardly then be identified as a particular experience at a particular time, other than as the close involvement in an experience which ghosts such a 'non-event': reifying the dream of awakening from that 'non-event' in traces in forms and experiences that encourage further involvement, whether consciously realised as so or not. I imagine some weirdness.

Isn't the goal of practice the goal of life. What goal would that be? Pretty odd if it didn't have any goals - the dog would starve for one thing.

If I am only the clothes I wear, and these clothes are clothed likewise, maybe the dropping off of my clothes is always looming.

Hence a man wearing an active loom is a silly metaphor for something or someone dangerous to stand next to if it weren't impossible.

A man claiming to be the whole loom looming and inviting you to find out you were too is also speaking metaphorically, but may ask you to adopt some loom-like tailoring to show willing.

Perhaps it does well to beware of clothes tailor-made to impress, regardless of what is done in them, or fresh ones adopted at a high price for want of a few painful stitches and scrubbing, or those who enjoy serious, potentially life-changing forays into the same old wardrobe as a hobby.

All clothes might be real and smell some, but saying so might just be the whiff of deodorant (Zen Mist or Lotus Fresh).

"And so the 'doing it' of Zen practice must include saying and thinking. Even if, say, one sits in silence the processes involved in 'saying' will arise. After all, the doing of sitting in silence will involve the effort of 'not saying' which is part of 'saying' processes."

Hi Anon,

I think we can be relatively quiet; but is there any such thing as silence in sitting?

Isn't saying already 'cut off' from the real instant/event of not saying anything? It's already 'leaping clear' of itself and any opposite that we can imagine such as 'silence' or 'not saying'.

The way of conduct indicated by Master Dogen is contained in a line that caught my attention some time ago (I'm still not sure why!)...

"The buddha way, in essence, is leaping clear of abundance and lack; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas."

... in not getting caught up in the abundance of activity or a lack of activity it allows for the whole drama of birth, death, delusion, realisation, sentient beings and buddhas to unfold... not as pairs of abstract, relative designations, but as real, express momentary facts.

So, it's not really just a question of the nature of self, of a reifier, although that question can certainly be asked; but we should be wary of answers that come in reference to what we think 'self' is, and certainly what we want in relation to ideas of self... 'enlightenment' etc (which is why Brad's statement is useful at times).

The real facts, the real selves, are actually happening here before we enter into that sort of narrative.

Isn't the goal of practice the goal of life. What goal would that be? Pretty odd if it didn't have any goals - the dog would starve for one thing.

Despite your goals or lack of 'em, I don't think you'd really let the dog starve! Sometimes really doing something, something we just know we have to do, might be to let go of a some goal/s or other.

I´ve been practicing zazen for over a year and I´ll go to my first sesshin. Any advice, encouragement, tip, anything???? Thanks

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